Six words: My Pope joke tweet was excommunicated.

So I was tweeting half a month ago, and I was reading all these Pope joke tweets going by. Sadly, I didn't have one. After about an hour, it was embarrassing; I couldn't even think of one. But I could think of an excuse for why I didn't have a funny Pope joke tweet. So that excuse was my throw-away tweet.

Right or wrong, I tend to view Twitter as a microcosm of the Internet.

There is a "Winner Takes All" "Runaway-Positive-Effect" thing going on on the Internet. I'm probably getting the percentages slightly wrong—they change according to niche, and time, and other variables—but basically, the #1 Player in a niche gloms about 85% of the traffic, the #2 Player grabs about 10% of the traffic, Players 3 through 9 split up about 4% of the traffic, AND ALL OTHER PLAYERS IN THAT NICHE HAVE TO SURVIVE ON THE DREGS, THE BOTTOM 1%. That's the bad news. The good news is that you can always create and define a new niche, and go full-tilt boogie all over it, until you are the boss of that new niche, owning 85% of it. Also, you can go Niche Shopping: If the niche is new and the Number One Player is coasting along, you can MOVE IN and go Full-Tilt-Boogie on #1's ass until you own 85% of the traffic and they are just the New Number Two busted back to 10%

Tens of thousands of bloggers are all tracking What Is HOT Right Now This Minute, trying to figure out and jump-start What Will Be SUPERNOVA HOT An Hour From Now, so they can slide in FIRST and take advantage of the Avalanche of Page Views that will accrue to them if they guess right. Anything that gets quickly a little bit ahead in Internet Rankings, soon gets MONSTROUSLY AHEAD because of multiple Positive-Feedback-Loops!

In the Twitter microcosm, who will read your tweet? Who will respond to it? First, you have your Followers. I love Twitter; it's where I go to play and blow off steam. Never mind my personal cynical opinion that 80% of all Twitter accounts are bots that will never read any of your tweets and exist to spew links, you do have a few actual persons reading your tweets, occasionally (Also, keep in mind, that statistically, many of the "Twitter women" are actually boys who have chosen a female persona. Who, me? Jaded?).

Anyway, if someone ReTweets you, whether a manual RT or a Twitter-approved RT, more people will see your tweet. If someone favorites your tweet, it gets put on a list at favstar: "Faved By Friends" which means more people see your tweet. If your tweet receives 10 stars quickly (I have no clue what the time limit is; I'm just a bit-part player on favstar) it goes on the 10-star leaderboard which gains a big bump in readership. There are 30-star boards; 50-star boards; 100-star boards; 250star boards; there are favstar accounts that the in-bred favstar Power Players religiously follow that ReTweet any tweet that gets 50 stars; another account that ReTweets any tweet that gets 100 stars; you get the idea. The more positive feedback you get the more positive feedback you get. What was the Biblical phrase? Them that's got shall get?

Now, my lifetime tweet average was 2 stars and 1 RT per tweet, last I checked, but occasionally one of my tweets will kick up a fuss; and it's usually not one of my favorite tweets.

There are multiple take-aways here. But if you haven't figured most of them out by now, why should I spill? @hg47